


Monstre

by NoelleAngelFyre



Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula - Bram Stoker, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
Genre: All Saints' Day (France), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Relationships (past), Drinking of Blood as an Intimate Act, F/M, Foreplay through acts of violence, Holiday Traditions, La Toussaint, Mentor/Protégé, Non-Explicit Sex, Paying respect to the dead, Vampires, defying gender norms, semi-graphic depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-16 20:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21277031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoelleAngelFyre/pseuds/NoelleAngelFyre
Summary: On the night of La Toussaint, the saints are celebrated, the dead are remembered, and the streets run red with blood.





	Monstre

Chrysanthemums send their earthy aroma throughout the air and spread florid color in pots of every shape on the street corners. In the cemeteries, the flowers bring color to grey and lifeless resting places as far as the eye might wander: homage paid to those loved and gone in shades of pink, orange, yellow, red, lavender, and perhaps a dozen more on the illustrative spectrum. For a day designated to commemorate the deceased, there is color in abundance here that speaks to a richness of life which, while perhaps a bit exaggerated, is doubtless to lift the spirits of those who still wander the earth with souls intact.

Mina finds the aroma of these flowers more alluring than others. She may still, on occasion, relish the sweet scent of a rose fresh off the bloom but that of other foliage is now profoundly offensive to the senses. Days spent in the company of bitter chemicals and the acidic burn of a flame separating elements to create something entirely new has compromised her ability to savor fragrances with the same girlish delight as she once did, in the days she was very much a girl with her arm joyfully linked to Lucy’s and a wreath of daisies atop her crown.

She is an anomaly in this season as much as she is to her own sex. The scarf is tucked neatly around her throat: a plush of red against pale skin and the velvet black of her cloak as though to ward off November’s chilled breath; yet the cut of her dress reveals the swell of breasts, cradled high in the whale-bone embrace of her corset, and a scandalous expanse of her left leg. Her hair, loose without proper restraints, is a ripple of copper in the wind. The collection of flowers in her hands, held solemnly at the breast, labels her a respectful participant in the evening’s event, but it does not stop the askance glares from women or the lustful examination from men.

She reaches the cemetery just after dusk. The wind is stronger here on the hill. The grave is marked beneath the bowed limbs of a willow tree, bare and stripped as winter approaches on the wing, and worn by the elements. She finds it an insult that Abraham’s grave should be battered in such a fashion; even so, the good doctor was never with illusion that he might be honorably remembered. Dutch by birth, he deserved to be properly entombed in his homeland. It was here, in France, that he was unexpectedly waylaid by the lowest of contaminations which he might have successfully battled, even overcome, with proper medicine. Even twenty years ago, this country was not without the latest achievements in modern medicinal practice, but by then Abraham Van Helsing was old and not of a wasteful life. He spent decades traveling the world: a man with too much knowledge for his own good in a world that didn’t subscribe to the supernatural or unorthodox sciences, accompanied by a woman steeped in scandal. He died an old man, warm in his bed in the quiet comfort of a French country home and the solemn company of the woman he’d nursed, mentored, and comforted through an endless existence which she otherwise might have faced alone.

The bouquet Mina sets atop the aged stone is mixed shades of lavender, orange, and yellow. Abraham would have called it unnecessary frivolity, but there is no one else to remember him in this place, in this time. There will be no one to remember him in the decades to come…save her.

Dark bathes the sky above, and the blood stirs in her veins. Night calls.

***

The sound of bones splintering inside the human body rings out through the night with the same subtlety as gunfire.

“Come on, little man,” Edward purrs, the satisfaction of breaking flesh rumbling deep in his chest, “we’re just getting started.”

To appease Henry – meaning, to shut him up – he has modified his selection. Accosting gents of refinement and sweeping ladies of ill repute creates headlines, but a homeless vagrant caught rummaging through the lady’s purse which he recently obtained through uncivilized means? That one is ripe for the taking. To keep Henry equally off his ear, Edward even left the purse on a quaint little window ledge, waiting for its mistress to gratefully retrieve and think nothing more of the man who took it.

His next blow lands in the fleshy part below the ribcage, where the belly is most vulnerable and – in this case – most prominent. The man hacks up a mass of blood. It lands on Edward’s right thigh. He barely notices.

Toying with his food for too long speaks to bad manners, so Edward finishes off the meal with one meaty palm around the man’s face to lift him a short distance off the cobblestone. With minor effort, he drives the poor bastard into the brick wall. His head splits like an orange peel. When Edward pulls his hand back, it’s dripping blood and the pulpy remnants of brain matter.

He flexes his arms and grins at the sky. A full moon tonight: eruption of light in the black void of sky above. He breathes in deeply: sweat, blood, stale piss, and cheap liquor. Here, in back alleys such as these, France and London are one and the same. The rot of sin knows no physical boundaries, and so Edward is always guaranteed to be at home wherever Nemo chooses to dock his lady.

His next drawn breath interrupts the norm. Something new is here. He breathes in again. He smells the acrid burn of chemicals; the metallic tinge of old blood with the fresh copper of newly-spilt…and the earthy perfume of France’s preferred floral arrangement to honor its dead. All that, mixed so sweetly with the aromatic delight of a woman’s flesh.

Mina.

She has chosen the quaint nook adjacent to his alley for her perch; dressed equal parts as a proper lady and whore, it takes no time for an empty-headed rat to wander into her trap of black velvet and polished porcelain flesh. This is a show put on just for him, Edward knows it, so he crouches in the darkness, hulking form enveloped by shadows, and assumes the role of faithful patron admiring his lady’s talents on a stage of her own construction.

The man isn’t homeless, nor is he a cheap drunk stumbling home after tying too many on at the pub. He’s polished, debonair: the snob-sort with which Henry used to mingle and talk about nothing. His hat comes off with a flourish as he pays Mina a lady’s due respect, then slides his arm around her waist with the rogue intentions which a whore is paid to swallow (literally or figuratively). Mina smiles, lips soft as angel’s grace, and addresses the man’s arm with a lazy glide from wrist to shoulder. A woman of many talents and wearer of many faces, she plays the coquette with shy smiles and inviting glances. With these tools alone, she beckons into the darkness, where witnesses are scarce and only the devil can applaud the final performance.

This one moves quickly, eager to get to the main event. His claim on her would be against cold brick: a cheap fuck to satisfy brute urges he can’t indulge with his blushing bride at home. Mina permits the first thrust of clothed hips in the interest of distracting him while her hand molds to the column of his throat – a trunk-like protrusion out of his collar – and encloses pale fingers around the shape.

His neck snaps before he has time to blink.

The lack of carnage makes this performance clean enough, particularly in the final chord, though a bit quaint for Edward’s personal taste. All the same, he appreciates her execution (pun mildly intended) for the simple absence of blood. She could so easily have drawn the man’s throat out with her teeth, but she didn’t. She won’t.

“I know what you need.” Edward purrs, satisfaction rumbling from his chest, and encases her shoulder in one massive palm. The gesture, simplistic in nature, serves two purposes: the first, to bring her back into the darkness and sin where she belongs, with him; the second, to set his offering before her without delay. His fingers lazily twine in her copper strands as Mina turns her head. With the same effortless grace that she snapped a man’s neck, her lips part to expose the pearly gleam of teeth right before sinking into the meaty vein pumping beneath his flesh.

This is their covenant, their bond: every time she draws of his blood, of Henry’s blood, it is as intoxicating as the first. Confinement aboard Nemo’s ship prevents Edward from experiencing the pleasure at his whim, but he permits Henry his indulgence because it makes Henry feel valued – something he sorely lacked in his old life and still perhaps places too much emphasis on in this new life; all the same, Henry’s need for validation supplies Edward’s impassioned need to reclaim his – their – mate. Their blood feeds Mina when traditional means fail, and her own indulgent craving for it – for them, him and Henry, together – ensures she will have of no other blood.

She retracts from his wrist a vision of black and red: red in her hair, red in her eyes, and red dripping from her mouth. There is no need to clean herself with urgency; Edward addresses the matter himself with greedy abandon.

In the strictest sense, the act of intimacy is not poised or graceful. Nothing entirely aligns perfectly when his size engulfs her twice over. Ultimately, such is a minor upset and does nothing to quell the urgency with which they pursue, hunt, each other in the darkness. When it finishes, Edward’s body will be littered with cuts open and bleeding, and her throat (as well as other, more intimate, areas of her person) will bear evidence of his teeth. For Mina, the marks will heal before sunrise; for Edward, there will be wounds even after the potion wears through its time and Henry steps back into this suit of flesh. Mina will treat him with the patient hands of a doctor, as skilled and compassionate as Henry himself, but the hot coil of arousal will burn low in Henry’s gut to remember those hands as the cause for every single injury.

Should Mina be feeling excitable herself, she will lick the blood from him first.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was intended as a Halloween post, but time got away from me. Better late than never. :) Reviews, as always, are love.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> Author's Note: My knowledge of All Saints' Day in France comes exclusively from Google. Any errors are not mend to offend but rather a clear demonstration of not knowing better.


End file.
